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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Rapture, Blister, Burn Also see Susan's review of Gigi
Gionfriddo has crafted her play to hit numerous hot buttons regarding the expectations of society and individuals toward women's lives. She centers her plot on Catherine (Michelle Six), a feminist theorist famous for her finding unexpected connections in pop culture: for example, a trajectory that begins with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, travels through the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, and ends in an onslaught of torture-based Hollywood horror movies. Because Catherine's mother Alice (Helen Hedman) recently suffered a heart attack, Catherine has given up her life in New York to return to her hometown, where her grad school friends Don (Tim Getman) and Gwen (Beth Hylton) also live. Don (who was Catherine's lover before she left him for a job opportunity in London) is a dean at a small college, while Gwen never finished her degree and has settled into life as a full-time homemaker and mother. Everyone seems happy, but the cracks are beginning to show through the surface—the drinking, the overindulgence in Internet porn, the overwhelming sense of purposelessness. The playwright uses the informal seminar Catherine teaches to Gwen and Avery (Maggie Erwin), an undergraduate and former babysitter of Gwen's children, to lay out the history of feminism and some of its internal conflicts. If the setup seems a little schematic, incorporating as it does Alice's traditional marriage and Avery's sardonic Millennial attitude along with Catherine and Gwen on opposite sides of the career/home debate, the characters are multifaceted and well brought to life by the cast, under the sensitive yet acerbic direction of Shirley Serotsky. Daniel Conway's clever scenic design suggests the inside-out nature of the proceedings: external walls covered in shingles with a cut-out silhouette that reveals interior and patio space. Round House Theatre
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